by Albert Able
“So,” he growled as the waiter I had been talking with vanished, leaving me to face my tormentor alone. “I understand you’ve been messing with things that don’t concern you. I hope you realise you’ll have to pay for what’s missing!” The Chef waved the meat cleaver for emphasis.
“I’m sorry Chef - it’s my first banquet here. I didn’t know,” I mumbled, trying desperately to look unruffled although I was sure my legs would give way under me any second.
“Um,” he pondered and rubbed his chin “how much did they pay you for tonight?” He enquired unusually politely.
“Fifty Lira,” I replied a bit too quickly.
“Um,” he mumbled again, he seemed to be calculating. “That should about cover it then, agreed?”
“But Chef, that means I’ve worked for nothing?” I protested.
“No not for nothing – you’ve paid for a valuable lesson! Next time I’ll have your ass, understood?” He cocked his head questioningly. “You pay me on Friday or else, understand?” He waved the meat cleaver once more, adding the final clause to his proposal.
Reluctantly, I nodded agreement and the chef turned and staggered back into the kitchen; then just as I was about to skulk away I flinched as a voice called out. “Where’s Marcus?”
“Who wants to know?” I replied dejectedly.
I had never seen, let alone spoken to, the Assistant Manager “Some English guests are asking for you at Reception. Come on, hurry!” He urged.
Two waiters, busy polishing glasses, looked up in surprise. “Probably going to have a little sport with him before they throw him in the river eh?” they giggled averting their eyes when the Assistant Manager fixed them with a stern glare.
“On my way,” I called out dejectedly, resigned to the fact that my career in the catering industry was about to come to an abrupt halt.
In the lobby the English guests I had served at the function were deep in conversation with another smartly dressed man.
The guest I had taken to be the group’s leader confronted me as I stepped forward nervously. “Ah there you are Marcus.” The man pointed. “We’ve been talking about you!”
I slumped even further into depression and waited for the final blow to be delivered.
At that point, the one of the other smartly dressed man from the group turned and addressed me. “So, Marcus, it seems we’ve made quite an impression on these most important guests!”
I was taken completely by surprise: he spoke perfect Italian and so was obviously not one of the English group, then it suddenly dawned on me who this must be. Of course, I had heard of ‘The Managing Director’ but had hardly ever dared to think that I would get this close to him.
“I simply thought that the hotel’s reputation was in jeopardy Sir” I stuttered, eyes on the floor, heart pounding in my chest adding apologetically “so I tried my best to resolve the situation.”
“And a fine job you did too!” the Managing Director exclaimed heartily. “These foreign trade delegations are some of our most valuable customers – so please accept my personal thanks. I don’t know how long you have been with us but I feel sure that you have the right attitude to go a long way with the organisation. Thank you, and if there’s ever anything I can do for you, feel free to call me!”
I stood speechless as he pressed his business card into my hand before returning his attention to the English guests.
I was about to leave, when the leader of the English group stepped towards me. “Oh by the way, Marcus, the boys wanted you to have this.”
The man thrust a bundle of notes into my hand; somehow resisting an overwhelming temptation to look, I slipped the money into my pocket.
“I’m most grateful Sir,” I bowed respectfully towards the others. “I hope we may have the pleasure of your company at our hotel in the future” I said with another slight bow adding, “and may I wish you all a safe journey home.”
I returned in a daze to the kitchens; where I soon learned, the grovelling Assistant Manager, the Restaurant Manager and numerous other members of staff had witnessed that whole episode.
The Head Waiter punched me in the shoulder and shouted. “I suppose you think you’re pretty clever eh? Well don’t bother volunteering for extra work again or get the crazy idea you will be a Chef de Rang one day. You’re staying where you belong, in the dish washing area, understand?”
I wanted to punch the pompous little idiot on the nose but the nerve failed me, so I drifted back to my shoddy little room and threw myself into bed.
I lay awake for hours trying to understand all that had happened during the evening. Suddenly I sat up in bed as I remembered my mother and her determination to survive the horrors of the war and her selfless dedication to raising me. I could also see the satisfied faces of those English guests and realised just how easy it had been to transform their evening from a disaster to a complete success.
“Damn it,” I thought. “Why should I be the one to be persecuted or embarrassed? I’m the one with the accolade from the Managing Director after all!’
I reached out and took the precious business card from where I had reverently placed it on my bedside table and as I laid back and caressed its embossed print, I felt a new wave of confidence gradually sweep across me, as the solution to the Chef’s little scam nudged its way into my thoughts.
I reasoned, that for him to get away with it there had to be others involved or at the least 'turning a blind eye' to it and that probably meant at least the Head Waiter – and Restaurant Manager.
Who else? I wondered, and what other fiddles are going on out there?
Suddenly, I knew what I had to do and I remember drifting back to sleep confident that my future in the hospitality industry was far from over.
The next morning at six-thirty, I reported to the washing up area of the kitchen as usual. I waited until the breakfast service was over and then approached the waiter who had told me about the Chef’s fiddle.
“Don’t get me involved - I wish I’d never mentioned any of it to you now,” he grated. With a young wife and two-month-old child, he was understandably terrified of losing his job.
“Please don’t worry. I swear you will not suffer - in fact, I am sure I can make your job a lot more secure! Okay? Now just tell me one more thing - do the other department heads have fiddles like Chef’s as well?”
The young waiter shrugged. “You really are a yokel aren’t you” he mocked, shaking his head in mock incredulity “of course they do! They all do! The Restaurant Manager runs his own wine stocks, the Bar Manager has his own bar stock... How else do you think they live like they do?”
“Okay, so I’m a simple country boy, in that case, just tell me in ‘simple’ terms, exactly what else is going on here, in this hotel.”
Within the next hour, I had every detail of three major frauds being conducted by the Chef, the Bar, the Restaurant Manager and the Housekeeper and so when the Head Chef arrived at ten-thirty, I was waiting confidently outside his little office.
“What the hell are you doing here?” The tubby chef demanded; the smell of last night’s alcohol still heavy on his breath.
“I think we should go inside Chef. We need a little chat.” I said tersely, waving the Managing Director’s business card at him.
The chef glared and pushed into the tiny office, which seemed even smaller by the time he had wedged his bulk behind the neatly arranged desk.
I sat on an upturned orange crate and tapped the business card meaningfully on the desk. “I see you keep everything very spick and span Chef” I complimented him “but now, your time’s up - I know every detail about your little scam.”
To my complete surprise he did not put up any kind of fight, instead he seemed to deflate in total surrender. It was only much later that I discovered that he had been kicked out of his last job for the same thing.
“I suppose that’s it then; you’ll be telling your posh friends all about it?” The Chef sighed, nervously twiddling a pencil.
“Well actually no; of course I could - but what is the point. The next Chef will soon be doing the same thing, so no Chef I don’t plan on saying anything, assuming we reach an understanding?”
Lifting up his head he suddenly appeared to recover a bit and taking a fresh interest in the conversation. “I suppose you’ll want a cut - is that it?” He snapped.
“No Chef, I don’t even want a cut but what I do want, is a little respect. You see, I want to learn the catering business backwards, because one day, I’m going to own a hotel like this.”
The Chef looked wide-eyed at me, shook his head and laughed. “Well son, if you help to keep me out of jail, I’ll certainly help you to move along the line but to think you’ll own a hotel like this… Wow, that’s certainly some ambition!”
I left his office and within the hour had the same conversation with the three other department heads.
I was on my way to success.
Over the next two years, encouraged and assisted by my new friends, I worked and trained in the skills of the Chef de Rang. I learned the mysterious art of the Sommelier and the amazing characters of the wines they offered. I earned extra cash by working as a porter on every available shift. Finally, I worked my way into Reception to learn all the tricks of the nerve centre of any hotel. Of course, in those days, there were no computers; instead, a complex ‘Manual Tab’ system faithfully recorded all the accounting activities of the hotel, whilst the neatly inscribed and carefully guarded Reservation Chart, was sacred only to the ‘booking clerks’.
I really loved those early years; living and working safe and secure within the hotel environment, and above all it provided me with the home and family I had so tragically lost. Yet ambitious though I was, I can still remember as I approached my twentieth birthday how I was faced with a terrifying decision, because the next move up the ladder would have to be into management - and to do that, you had to apply for a transfer and promotion in another hotel within the group.
My state of anxiety did not last for long however, when I learned that my application for the position of Assistant Manager in the company’s New York hotel had been accepted.
I was to spend one full year there and interestingly enough; I soon discovered very similar scams in operation. Once again, I made it my business to let the perpetrators know that I knew and so I soon had powerful friends again and my career appeared to be set on a roller coaster of success. That was until the sudden death of the Head Waiter threatened to ruin it all.
Failing to appear for the lunch service one day, I suspected that he was drunk again and started a discreet search. It wasn’t long before I found him, lying in a pool of blood, on the floor of the wine cellar; his throat appeared to have been slashed from ear to ear, the neck of a broken wine bottle, rather strangely, still clutched in his blood drenched hand.
Averting my eyes from the gore, I spotted a typewritten note on the table. It read quite simply “I confess to my part in the wine smuggling with the mob but those bastards in the back office must also pay for their part.” It was signed with a spidery scrawl: “Luigi”.
As I fought to control the pain in my stomach and the urge to throw up, I always remember wondering 'How do you cut your own throat with a broken bottle?'
A sudden intense fear, replaced the nausea as I reached for the telephone; the General Manager was the only person who could deal with this one.
The police eventually appeared and poor old Luigi’s body was taken to the morgue.
All the staff were individually questioned and the whole affair was over surprisingly quickly. The police read the note, took it at face value and assumed it was a suicide. They were not interested in the allegation of wine smuggling and advised the General Manager to conduct his own internal inquiry if he felt the need.
Over the next few weeks, there was a noticeable change of attitude in the food and beverage departments as a team of auditors, appointed by Head Office, investigated their activities.
Eventually, they completed their investigations and gravely concluded that the Head Chef, the Bar manager and of course the late Wine Waiter Luigi, were all involved in mismanaging the stocks under their control and as a consequence, were all summarily dismissed.
I recall the conversation I had with the General Manager of that New York hotel some years later.
“Marcus,” he said as he reflected on the dismissal of the various heads of department, “they may have been making some money on the side but what one tends to forget, is that they ran their departments efficiently, returning the required percentage returns to the company. After their dismissal, they were replaced by a bunch of college boys who lacked basic street skills and soon almost every one in those departments had their fingers in the till. Do you know that it was almost ten years before the company saw the same level of profit margin again?” The General Manager e smiled knowingly at me. “Better the Devil you know eh!”
I knew exactly what he meant.
Happily, together with the other Junior Managers, I had been completely exonerated of any involvement and so, since my temporary American work permit had almost expired and knowing that the people concerned in the wine supply fiddle, were the local mobsters; I was confident, that Luigi’s death was certainly no suicide, so to be honest; I could not get away from there quickly enough and so chose that moment to take up the promotion I had been offered, as General Manager at one the groups United Kingdom city hotels.
Little did I realise that life would soon be even more exciting in London.
******
The Riverside Hotel sits on the Thames embankment overlooking the bustling activities of that great river. Conveniently positioned near many of London’s iconic establishments, in particular the Houses of Parliament, from where the hotel attracts many of its varied clients.
I was the youngest general manager ever to have been appointed by the company and so I naturally assumed my new roll with enormous pride and determination.
At first, there was considerable resistance from the long serving staff to the ‘young Italian upstart’ who they believed, was clearly going to spoil all the deep-rooted traditions of ‘their’ hotel; or in other words, foul up their profitable little scams. However, by the end of the first week, I had not only identified, every one of their little tricks but had also, as was to become ‘my way’, used them to win over the support and cooperation of all the department heads involved. With the net result, that by the time the next end of month reports were completed, the figures showed the first upturn in performance for several years.
The Directors were naturally delighted and with it my own credibility had been firmly established.
Now at the tender age of twenty-three and flushed with confidence I was even more determined to make my own fortune in the hotel business.
******
The vast lobby at the Riverside Hotel was not just somewhere for its residents to relax but also a popular and convenient meeting place for the general public. Shoppers sipped tea and chatted excitedly about their purchases, whilst diplomats, politicians and the like, meet informally to discus their mysterious occupations and there were several boardrooms available for more formal or confidential business meetings.
When I first started in my new position at the hotel, the evenings especially, attracted several of the more worldly young men and women, plying the oldest profession on earth; attempting to gain the attention of potential customers.
Much to the annoyance of the hotel porters, the traditional discrete link to such activities, a couple of local pimps, who pocketed eighty percent or more of their workhorses hard-earned cash, quite openly controlled these prostitutes working the hotel lobby.
Even more disgracefully, as my head porter bitterly complained “without as much as a drink for us!”
After a few enquiries, I discovered that the local crime gangs had been at war for the last few months, with no one group sufficiently powerful enough to hold overall control of the area. Th
e consequence was that petty crime was rampant, with several minor drug and prostitution operators, springing up to take advantage of the situation.
A pimp touting for business in the Lobby of your establishment however, is not the image any decent hotelier wants to encourage.
I consulted the Head Porter.
“It’s been a real mess ever since Jack Fisher got himself knocked off last winter,” The ageing porter looked across towards the open lobby “he would never let his people in here without a nod and only then private bookings” he rubbed his thumb and index finger together “but these buggers don’t even drop us a drink!” He shook his head in disgust.
“Well I want them out,” I told him “so tonight we are going to sort it out. Which means you and me; actually, I think it would be good if we could find a bit of ‘Help’ from somewhere, just in case, any ideas?”
The porter smiled knowingly at me “I have just the right lads in mind. Will there be a drink in it for em?”
“That’s for sure,” I said. “I just hope they don’t have to do too much to earn it?”
Later that evening Ed, the somewhat corpulent Head Porter and at least sixty five years of age appeared, sporting a beaming smile as he introduced the ‘Help’
“I didn’t think I’d ever get the chance to sort these buggers out. I’m going to enjoy this.” Ed addressed the two stern faced smartly dressed young men accompanying him and punched his fist into his other palm, anticipating the forthcoming confrontation with obvious relish.
“Steady on Ed, I think you’d better leave the heavy stuff to us.” The tallest one cautioned without any change of expression.
The plan was that I would approach the pimp and ask him to accompany me to the door, where I would explain in simple terms, that he could no longer operate inside the hotel and since it was not expected, that he would accept the termination of a prime catchment area for his illicit business easily; at that point the Porter, together with his ‘Helpers’ would step in and convince him.
I approached the neatly dressed pimp; he was a tall skinny man with longish dark hair and smoking a cigarette. He noticed me walking to wards him and looked about suspiciously.
